Ruin was a punk band from Philadelphia. Their first live shows and recordings date to 1980, with founders Damon and Glenn Wallis on guitars, Steve Marasco on bass, and J.R. Arters on drums. By 1982, the lineup of Ruin was largely settled: Vosco Thomas Adams on vocals, Cordy Swope on bass, the Wallis brothers on guitars, and Richard Hutchins on drums. Paul Della Pelle became the drummer when Hutchins left the band in 1984. All six members played the so-called ReUnIoN shows in 1996, 1997, 2013, and 2016.

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As teenagers inspired by the eruption of the American and British punk movement, the Wallis brothers and Adams began writing songs together around 1978. Several songs that became fixtures of Ruin's performances date to this early period, including their revved-up covers of Leonard Cohen.[1][a] In what became a hallmark of Ruin, the early Wallis-Adams songs, while loyal to the hyper-rhythms and aggressive delivery of early punk and later hardcore, were just as likely to evoke the melancholia of American folk music or the frantic jam quality of psychedelic rock.[1] Incoming bassist Cordy Swope added elements of 1960s British invasion and American underground art rock to the band's mix of styles.[2] This eclecticism became a defining feature of the Philadelphiaunderground music scene of the 1980s and beyond, an environment that contributed to Ruin's success.[3][4][5] American author and urbanist Adam Greenfield noted: "Philadelphia threw nothing but curveballs. McRad, The Dead Milkmen, Pagan Babies, Scram: none of them quite fit the template, somehow. They were too weird, too goofy, too unpredictable, too hard to fit into the categories that were already then beginning to solidify."[6]

According to Pulitzer Prize-nominated rock critic Ken Tucker, by 1984 Ruin had established itself as "one of the most promising bands" in the Philadelphia region, "an ambitious group unto something new—a striking synthesis of rock styles."[7] By 1986, Ruin had become "one of the most beloved bands in the history of Philly," according to Maximum Rocknroll's Stacey Finney.[8]WKDU DJ Mike Eidel has gone as far as to call them "the best Philly band ever."[9][10]

Reviews of Ruin have suggested it is a uniquely "spiritual" band.[1][2][6] Glenn Wallis has vigorously rejected this label, insisting that the entire focus of the band was the "perfectly ordinary" nature of everyday reality,[11] but the characterization has been repeated.[12][13][14][15] It was brought up in the very first Philadelphia Inquirer review of a Ruin performance: "Ruin propounds an aggressively thoughtful philosophy with roots in a clear-eyed, unsentimental Eastern mysticism... As someone who usually finds such obtrusive gestures corny or pretentious, I was surprised to hear how successfully Ruin managed to combine harsh music with a lucid spiritualism."[7]

A decade before the advent of Krishnacore or other acceptable displays of "spirituality" in the typically brutal American underground scene,[16] Ruin was being called a "Buddhist punk band."[1][11][17][18] While, according to Adams, it is true that five of the six members of Ruin were practicing Buddhists during the period of formation,[18] Wallis argues that the label is misapplied in that the band as a whole eschewed the proselytizing that it suggests.[11]

Ruin investigated ways in which to dissolve artificial barriers between people. One obvious one was between “audience” and “performer,” in the punk rock context. We did things like dressing in white and turning the lights down in order to reduce the individual, ego-assertive aspect of “performing” in favor of the communal, cathartic qualities of what we imagined a Dionysian frenzy might have felt like. We gave the “audience” sparklers to wave around in the dark—a means of participation that anyone could interpret as they liked. We sprinkled pamphlets about ideas we had (rather than about judgmental declarations) in the often highly mannered atmosphere of punk rock shows. These small acts created openings for people to commune with each other, and became alternate channels of “engaging” people as well as for moving ourselves.[1]

Vosco Thomas Adams, vocals. Previously played with Physical Push and Sensory Fix. Subsequently played with Fox in Sox, Open Minded Men (with Darren Finizio), and as a solo artist at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Carol Schutzbank (1961–1995). Manager from 1982-1984. Schutzbank was "a prime mover on the Philadelphia underground rock." She co-founded and edited the "seminal East Coast fanzine" B-Side magazine, and founded the Delaware Valley Music Poll Awards.[22]

Lee Paris (1954–1986; born Lee Salmons). Manager from 1984–1985. The "energetic, frequently frenetic and occasionally tasteless tastemaker" Paris is a "legendary" figure in Philadelphia music.[23] His late-Sunday-night radio show on WXPN, Yesterday's Now Music Today (co-hosted with Roid Kafka (born Steve Prod)), was the Philadelphia area's "first significant new music program."[24]

^ Leonard Cohen commented approvingly on Ruin's cover of his "Master Song:" “On this new album by Ruin, they sing the first verse of the ‘Master Song’ more or less as I sing it, but then they bring this world to it of every sound you ever heard and murder it, but as it should be murdered. It’s a clean killing” (SPIN Magazine, August 1985, Volume one, Number four, p. 27).